


Let it out

by Zoya113



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, This sounded better in my head, injury tw, swearing tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 20:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19027360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Au where Emma and Paul soldier through ‘Let it Out’ together





	Let it out

**Author's Note:**

> God this sounded so much better in my head

“Okay, okay okay,” Paul rambled anxiously as he searched about in the debris of what was once a helicopter. “So, I just need to get to the Starlight theatre, destroy the meteor and all these things will drop dead?”   
A searing, burning pain courses through Emma’s body. “Yeah, I sure as shit hope so,” She grunted, her voice strained. She watched him step back from the helicopter, a belt of grenades strapped around his shoulders.   
He looked down at her with pity, kneeling down by her side and gently placing his hand on her shoulder as if he was scared she would break.  
“Hey Paul,” Emma begun, swallowing something uncomfortable rising in her throat. “I know why you came into Beanies all those times instead of just going to Starbucks.”   
Even now Paul’s face turned red.  
“And it wasn’t because you liked our shit coffee, our coffee was shit, because we didn’t care and sometimes we would spit in it but,” she was fighting for breath. Burning white pain lashed out through her body and she winced, feeling faint. “I didn’t know you back then and I wish I did, but anyways Paul, if we get through this I would love to just see a nice silent movie with you, but incase we don’t-“   
Paul cut her off with a pointed look. “I’m not leaving you behind.”   
“What?” Emma could barely get the word out when blood forced its way up her throat. She coughed it out and it trickled down her blouse, staining the collar. “Oh.”   
“Oh, oh Emma.”   
“Yeah, ugh,” she wiped her mouth and every movement made her feel like her leg was being torn off. “That’s a lot of blood.”   
“Okay, we’re gonna...” Paul didn’t know what to do. “Can you lie down?”   
“I am.”   
“No, put your head down, just don’t fall asleep.”   
“Got it.” Emma rested her head down in Paul’s lap with a gurgle. “Fuck.”   
“Uhh,” Paul’s hands hovered over her uncertainly. “I’m gonna pull it out.”   
“Wait are you for fucking real?” Emma shot back up, screaming at the unexpected but not surprising jabbing feeling in her leg that hurt enough to make her want to vomit. “No, you aren’t doing that, that’s gonna fucking hurt.”She didn’t have the energy or a firm enough grip on her consciousness to elaborate. “You just gotta stop the bleeding,” she gritted her teeth as Paul touched the tip of the rebar.   
“Here, hold on.” Paul took his tie off and balled it up in his hands. “Bite down on this. I know it hurts but if you scream they’ll find us.”   
Emma nodded, a feverish sweat overtaking her body. “We gotta get to the Starlight ‘n blow that shit up now.” Her words were muffled by his tie. She shut her eyes.  
“I just want to make sure you won’t bleed to death first, okay?” He sounded stressed. “I’m going to take your bow,” he explained, lifting up her bloodied collar to untie the bow. “I think you’ve broken a few things.”   
“No shit.”   
“At least you’ll wear a seatbelt next time,” he told her. “Because there will be a next time.”   
Emma gave a forced laugh. “Just chop my whole leg off, it’d hurt less.”   
“I’m gonna touch the wound now okay?”   
Emma screeched and bit down onto his tie and Paul carefully wrapped her bow around the gaping wound on her thigh.   
“Nearly done, nearly done,” he kept murmuring. “Just let me concentrate.”   
The ribbon wasn’t long enough to properly compress the wound and stop the bleeding but it was working better than Emma had thought.   
“I can carry you,” Paul promised. “Do you mind?”   
Emma wanted to tell him she could walk on her own but she couldn’t even get the words out. She nodded, screaming into his tie again as he heaved her off the ground into his arms. “Shit, fuck, fuck, fuck,” she cursed, her fingernails digging into his skin.  
Paul wasn’t finding it pleasant either. He must’ve sprained an ankle or hurt his leg in the fall because he walked with a slight limp, and he was already struggling to carry her and make sure the bar in her leg wasn’t touching anything and he clearly wasn’t enjoying his skin being ripped off.  
“Em,” he started, his voice shaky.   
She grunted to acknowledge him.   
“Are you holding on?”   
She didn’t reply this time but the fact she was still conscious was a good enough answer.  
“I just need to put you down for a sec. is that okay?”  
“Mhmm just drop me.”   
“Not doing that,” he settled her back down, revealing a blood stain she had left on his white shirt. He scanned the road and listened carefully for song.   
She let her head fall back and clenched her eyes shut, trying to manage the pain. “Paul does it look bad?”   
Paul looked over at her. “Like, the bar?”   
“No, my makeup. Yes! Of course the bar!” She snapped.   
“Em I know you’re in a lot of pain-“  
“I am!”   
“But right now we can’t get to a hospital.”   
“I’m not gonna make it Paul,” she looked like she wanted to roll onto her side but the metal bar protruding from either side of her thigh stopped her from moving at all. “Shit!” She stopped her other foot on the concrete and pounded her fist like a child having a tantrum.   
“Okay Em, listen,” he lowered his voice down, trying to stop it shaking. “I’m gonna do something and you’re really gonna hate me for it.” He untucked his dress shirt from his suit pants and undid the bottom button, tearing off a strip of material with quivering hands.   
“I don’t like where this is going,” Emma mumbled, more blood dribbling from her mouth. She wiped it away with her wrist.   
“Just close your eyes okay? Put this back in your mouth.” He folded his tie up again, forcing it between her gritted teeth.   
Emma tensed, shutting her eyes and shielding her face.   
“Sorry, Em.”   
Paul put one hand down on her thigh, too close to the injury for her comfort. Then there was the light touch of his fingertips on top of the bar that was enough to send another shiver of pain all throughout her body from her toes to her scalp.   
Then her whole body was set on fire as Paul yanked the pipe out in the swiftest movement he could manage.   
Scream was an understatement. She howled, crying until her throat hurt and then crying some more. She couldn’t feel anything but pain, it melted over her like lava. She lost track of where her body ended and where the ground began, she couldn’t make out where her hand was in comparison to her feet or where her head was compared to her shoulder, every part of her was filled with the same ravaging pain.   
She felt her face press up against something as Paul pulled her into his chest in both an effort to comfort her and muffle her screeches.   
She couldn’t get a word out.   
“Em, we gotta keep moving.” He let go of her head for a second, wrapping the shred of fabric tight around the wound that was now bleeding worse than ever. “You’ll be okay, okay?”   
That was the last thing she heard before she blacked out.

She blinked open her eyes and she was staring at the ground. Paul was carrying her over his shoulders. A slow wave of dull pain passed through her body with every step Paul took.   
She grunted to let him know she was awake.   
“Are you okay?” He asked first.   
“Fuck, yeah.”   
“Sorry, I was carrying you better before but my arms got sore and I really wanted t keep a hand free just incase and it looked like it was hurting your leg and...” his anxious ramble slowly trailed off. “The old Starlight theatre,” he breathed.   
“Hm?” Emma tried to turn her head but she couldn’t see.   
Paul slowly took her off his shoulder and settled her lightly down on her own two feet. She kept one arm tightly around his neck to take the pressure off her bad leg. The theatre lights illuminated the surroundings in an eerie blue light.   
She looked down at the wound, it had already bled through the fabric and had been steadily trickling down her leg for a while now.   
“Come on Paul, let’s go blow that fucker to pieces.”   
He pushed open the door and peered inside.  
Ghostly luminescent spots drifted through the air like blue fireflies.   
“Spores,” Emma whispered to Paul.   
They crept slowly past the concession stands and ticket booths.   
Somewhere from within the theatre there was an alarm going off that sounded like a sirens wail.   
Paul flinched, leaning into Emma with his free hand on his chest. “Oh shit,” he bit his lip. “I thought that was someone,” he was looking at a poster hung up on the wall,   
The spores were shedding a faint light onto an actor’s face on the poster.   
“Yeah,” Emma agreed quietly. “I can barely see where I’m walking.”   
The spores danced and flittered through the room like butterflies, leading a trail through the air towards the ajar theatre doors.  
Emma and Paul exchanged a look.  
“Can you do it?” Paul asked.   
“I’ll be fine, can you?”   
Paul nodded, his fingers brushing over the hard shell of the grenades across his chest.   
Together, they limped towards the grand theatre doors.   
As Paul pushed the door open a bright blue light flooded into the main lobby.   
Thousands upon thousands of bright spores filled the theatre.   
Emma gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth.   
“There it is, the meteor.” Paul helped Emma sit down on the seat in the back row. “You wait here, I’ll be two seconds,” he assured her. “Just hold on.”  
She looked at him pleadingly, she didn’t want him to go. “I’ll hang on, go get them,” she ended up saying. She lifted up the arm rests of the chairs so she could lay down.  
Her head was ringing and the alarm wasn’t helping her headache either, it sounded like a dying wind up toy.   
“We’ve been waiting for you Paul,” a solemn voice from the stage filled up the silence.   
Emma shot up right, muffling her surprised noise with her hand.   
“Bill!” Paul gasped. “Stay back!” He held out his hand to keep his distance.   
“Watch out Paul, he might kick your head,” a second figure emerged from stage right, and then a third.   
“And that would be a la de da da da.”  
“Fucking Nora?” Emma squinted even though she recognised her boss almost immediately.   
“Ted! Emma’s boss!” Paul stammered.   
Emma fought her way to her feet, she had to go and help him.   
“Glad you could make it on time,” came a new voice from directly behind her.   
“Woah!” Emma exclaimed, leaning back against the row in front of her to maintain her balance. She didn’t recognise the girl, she was young, maybe seventeen or eighteen. The yellow pinafore she wore was turned an ugly shade by the neon blue lighting.   
“You aren’t going anywhere,” the girl moved about with a broken body, her steps funny and her arms hovering crookedly by her sides like a marionette.   
“Huh!?” She looked back out of the corner of her eye at Paul.   
There were about three more on the stage now, creating almost a barrier between him and the meteor.   
“You look frightened. Just breathe,” the girl encouraged.   
“Breathe?” Emma looked up at the spiral of spores fluttering around the gilded, baroque theatre ceiling. “Oh my god, the spores!” She spun around, she had to tell Paul. “Paul! Paul! Don’t-“   
She threw a hand over her mouth. “He’s busy right now,” a malicious smile spread across her face as the first notes of a song broke out. “We mustn’t keep them waiting.” She grabbed Emma’s wrist in an attempt to pull her down the aisles towards the stage but Emma couldn’t stand on her own feet, she collapsed in the aisle.   
The girl made the decision in less than a second to leave her lying there, to struggle to drag her down the aisle would throw of the precious rhythm and she would not do that.   
She continued down the aisle alone.   
“Paul!” Emma raised her head, trying to call out to him over the music. “Don’t breathe it in! Don’t-“ she was cut off by a sharp and drawn out note.   
“Never!” Paul grasped at his throat. “What was that?”   
“You let it out.”  
“Was that a note? Or just a sound?”   
Emma reached up to the chairs around her, ignoring the tearing pains in her leg as she tried to support herself. “Paul!” She screamed. “You have to stop!”   
Emma staggered down the aisle. “Oh shit, shit shit shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen oh my god, it’s not happening.” Every part of her begged to cry and scream and run but she had to hold her breath. She wasn’t going to turn into one of these monsters.   
“Just let it out, let it out, let it out,” the Hive persuaded in a haunting voice too loud to be outside her head.   
She could feel every beat in time with her heart and every word fed to her through her head, and then she heard Paul.   
“I’ve never been happy, wouldn’t that be nice?” Chills ran down her spine  
She wanted to join him, sing a duet or rise from her broken leg to twirl and pirouette down the aisle towards him.   
She fought the urge and shut her mouth, holding her breath.   
She no longer had to limp or crawl towards the stage, she felt lighter on her feet than ever before. Yet she remained on the floor, to be healed by the Hive was giving them a victory and even if it meant chopping her leg off she was not going to give them that.   
Her lungs started to burn. She didn’t care. She wasn’t going to breath in, she’d rather die. She watched Paul desperately, begging him to pull the pin and to stop singing, only one thing was stopping him from ending every thing. The only thing stopping them from being happy, really happy -not Hive happy- but being happy together. Moving to Colorado, having a pot farm, buying two dogs and spending every moment of the day together, waking up on Saturdays without a job to go to or classes to attend and being able to spend it cuddled in each other’s arms as sunbeams filtered through their cream shades and onto their bed. All Paul had to do was pull the pin and that would be their life. Oh god. He couldn’t die here, they couldn’t lose to the Hive. It couldn’t end like this. She needed him in her life.   
Paul was swarmed, all six of them and now the girl in the yellow pinafore circled him as he held the grenade above his head.   
“Paul!” She wanted him.   
Paul pulled the pin.   
Then everything went black.


End file.
